President Donald Trump called Abdul El-Sayed “Mohammed” at a Tennessee rally on Saturday. “I’m the president, I can call him whatever the hell I want,” he said. Two days later, in Ohio, he went further: “He’s a jihadist.”
The remarks fit a pattern. With Republican midterm prospects dimming, the party’s leading figures have turned to darker rhetoric, portraying Democratic candidates as strange, threatening and at odds with what it means to be—and look like—an American. Election Day is November 3, three weeks away.
Who Is Targeted
Trump has also revived racially derogatory claims that Haitians and Africans are invading key election states such as Ohio. Speaking in Texas on Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance called Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico a “freak” and joked in a way that implied Talarico is gay. Trump has repeatedly argued that Talarico, a vegan, doesn’t fit the carnivorous Lone Star State.
The sharpest escalation targeted Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia. After federal officials searched her home on Monday, Trump questioned whether she had constitutional rights as a naturalized citizen “from one of the worst countries anywhere on the planet.” His remarks heightened concerns that he was using executive power against a political foe. The Department of Justice said it carried out an enforcement operation at Omar’s home. Omar is running for reelection, and independent verification of evidence or accusations against her remains unavailable. She said Trump had smeared her for years and was now treating her as a political enemy.
In Ohio, Trump said Omar “comes in from a country without laws, without police, without military, without — all they do is shoot each other.” He added: “They come into the United States of America and they tell us how to run our country. We’re not going to stand for it. They drive up taxes. They drive up healthcare costs, insurance costs, childcare costs.”
Minnesota welcomed tens of thousands of Somalis in the early 1990s, after violence and collapse engulfed their country. The administration says the community includes violent criminals and widespread fraud centered in day care centers. Somali leaders say violent criminals are a tiny minority, and that Trump and Republicans are maligning the community without justification.
What the Words Mean
“Jihadist” describes a radicalized terrorist who rejects democracy; the label suggests a connection to groups such as Al-Qaeda or ISIS. The word was meant to frighten voters into viewing El-Sayed, the former executive director of the Detroit Health Department, as a security threat. Calling him “Mohammed” demeans him and insults Muslims’ humanity and individuality. Together, the remarks cast the Michigan-born Democrat, and people who share his faith, as un-American and undeserving of citizens’ political rights. The tactic recalls Trump’s repeated use of Barack Obama’s middle name, Hussein.
Republicans have highlighted El-Sayed’s claim, made shortly after the October 7 attacks, that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Many American Jews, including Democratic voters, object to that term, while mourning the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in the Israel-Hamas war after the attacks that killed more than 1,200 people, mostly Israelis, in 2023.
El-Sayed responded on X. “He knows my name is Abdul. He says it everyday,” he wrote. “But he’s not just attacking me. He’s attacking all of us. He thinks so low of us. He thinks he can use my name and my faith to distract us from the suffering his policies are inflicting on us at the pump, at the grocery store, and at the doctor’s office.”
The Politics and the Pushback
Trump’s approval rating stood at 33% in the latest CNN poll of polls. Majorities of Americans blamed his decisions for worsening their struggles with the high costs of food, housing, gasoline and diesel. Trump and Vance have campaigned in red states where Republicans hadn’t expected a fight this late. Vance’s “freak” jab at Talarico appeared aimed at distracting from struggling, scandal-plagued GOP Senate candidate Attorney General Ken Paxton, whom Trump personally selected. Both El-Sayed and Talarico are in races expected to go down to the wire.
Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric appears aimed, at least in part, at the most conservative voters the GOP needs to turn out in large numbers to avoid a midterm disaster. His aides deny he is racist and point to events marking occasions such as Black History Month, as well as his increased support among minority voters in the 2024 election. In February, then-White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt criticized “radical Democrats throughout the years who have accused this president falsely of being a racist.”
Many Republican voters allege a double standard. They point out that some senior Democrats have openly called Trump a fascist and that Hillary Clinton once described half of Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables.” Some insults, though, come with a smile, giving Trump and Vance cover to call them rough-and-tumble campaigning. That doesn’t make attacks on a person’s race, faith, appearance or manner more acceptable.
The pattern continues a trend in the newly populist Republican Party: deciding who counts as an authentic American. In 2008, vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin spoke of “real America” as the small-town patriots in “pro-America areas of this great nation.” Her apology now seems like a historical curiosity; her remarks look mild next to Trump’s.
Why This Matters:
When a president questions whether a naturalized citizen has constitutional rights, the issue reaches beyond campaign theater. Citizenship is supposed to mean equal protection, no matter where a person was born or how they worship. Targeting Muslim and Somali-born candidates tests that principle at the highest level of government, and affects communities already facing suspicion and scrutiny. The search of Omar’s home, alongside the president’s rhetoric, raises a separate question: is federal enforcement power being used against political opponents? Voters face high costs for food, housing and fuel, yet candidates’ names, faiths and diets are drawing attention. The response from the public and institutions will help determine whether identity-based attacks remain part of American campaigns.